Safety concerns grow in LAUSD; Carvalho turns to police – EdSource

Four years after the district police were withdrawn from individual school campuses, the Los Angeles Unified School District has temporarily reinstated police officers at two schools – reigniting long-standing debates and dissatisfaction about policing in schools.

According to a May 13 memo to the school board, Superintendent Alberto Carvalho sought to reinstate police officers at 20 school sites to increase campus security. The campuses were selected based on “relevant security data.”

“As we approach the end of the school year, we continue to refine our protocols to ensure our schools are safe and welcoming environments for students and staff,” he said in the memo. “It is critical that we remain aware of the specific needs of our schools and respond accordingly.”

A day later, Carvalho’s plan failed amid fierce backlash. The district limited police to just two of the 20 schools through the end of the school year because of “heightened activity” there: Washington Preparatory High School and Northridge Middle School. According to an LAUSD spokesperson, police could be stationed at each of the school campuses either all day or at certain times, including when classes are off.

The district will decide weekly whether to keep police on site. What the district will do next is unclear.

The district’s own data shows a 45% increase in incidents involving suicide risk, fighting/physical aggression, threats, illegal/controlled substances and weapons from 2017-18 to 2022-23. And 25% in the year to 2022-23.

In the year up to 2022/23, the number of weapons incidents rose from 994 to 1,197.

Police have been deployed to both campuses following incidents involving gunfire. In one of those cases, a student died in a shooting a few blocks from Washington Prep. In that incident, a member of the Safe Passage program – in which community members monitor routes to school to ensure student safety – reportedly failed to intervene.

Meanwhile, at Northridge Middle School, police arrested two students who brought loaded semi-automatic pistols. Members of United Teachers Los Angeles then rallied in support of student safety, claiming the district failed to impose a curfew and failed to communicate adequately. LAUSD did not respond to the union’s allegations.

Photo credit: Courtesy of UTLA

“The recent surge in interest in bringing police back to schools is due to a number of incidents on campus,” said Amir Whitaker, senior legal counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Southern California. “And as always, the immediate response is to bring in the police – even though we often know that police could not have prevented the situations in the first place.” Whitaker is also the lead author of a 2021 report titled “No Police in Schools,” which concluded that police in schools have “devastating and discriminatory impacts on tens of thousands of California students.”

How LAUSD uses its police is part of an ongoing EdSource investigation that uncovered the massive police presence in K-12 schools in California. EdSource obtained nearly 46,000 call logs from 164 law enforcement agencies for the period January to June 2023. The LAUSD Police Department refused to release its data.

The current debate over school police is part of a long-running tug-of-war over student safety. Some community members have spoken out in favor of stronger law enforcement during board meetings, while others believe school police should be eliminated altogether.

“There is no safety on campus and that obviously impacts our children,” says Efigenia Flores, a school district parent and member of Our Voice/Nuestra Voz, a group of Latino parents who has repeatedly called for increased police presence as well as mental health support and counseling in meetings with district officials.

“This is unacceptable,” she added in Spanish. “That’s why we want a clear and transparent plan that includes our voice.”

According to a recent District Safety and School Climate Presentation: Numerous safety concerns have increased throughout the district in recent years. Many parents are concerned about the well-being of their children and want the district to re-establish its presence on individual school campuses.

Last Tuesday, a fourth-grader at Glassell Park Elementary brought a loaded handgun to school. No one was injured, and Principal Claudia Pelayo told the campus community that the school responded immediately and tasked the Los Angeles School Police Department and Region West Operations with investigating.

“Consistent with our commitment to comprehensive safety measures and as an ongoing practice, we continually review relevant statistical data and, if deemed necessary, implement increased on-campus support through a number of departments within our district,” a district spokesperson said in a statement to EdSource.

Unequal access to community-based security

However, several community organizations have claimed that law enforcement increases fears of racial profiling and violence against students of color – According to Joseph Williams, director of Students Deserve, a community organization dedicated to “making black lives matter in schools,” the statement added that the district has “truly failed to commit to implementing” community-based safety measures that could help address the “root causes” of the violence.

These community efforts include Safe Passage and restorative justice practices designed to help students understand the impact of negative behavior and address the underlying challenges that may have led to its occurrence in the first place.

However, LAUSD spokeswoman Shannon Haber stressed that the district has “really leaned on our safety initiatives and restorative justice practices,” citing efforts to hire more mental health professionals and partnerships to promote safe transition, among other things.

School board member Tanya Ortiz Franklin has long supported restorative measures in the district and said black students’ fear of police is “not something I personally want to perpetuate.”

“Everyone’s job in the school district is to keep children safe. However, some people believe that only the officers focus on safety,” Ortiz Franklin said in an interview with EdSource.

“Your teachers value safety, your principals value safety, your campus assistants value safety – everyone understands that this is our number one concern. So as a system, we need to improve and evolve in more than just one department. We all need to make an effort.”

Current LAUSD Law Enforcement Landscape

In 2020, after the murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police, the LAUSD School Board voted to reduce the number of school police officers in the district’s Los Angeles School Police Department by 35% and to remove police officers from all school campuses.

According to a December 15, 2020, Board of Education report, the county’s police department faced $25 million in cuts in the 2020-21 budget, including more than $14 million in salaries and more than $10 million in overtime pay.

Since then, the district has implemented a “patrol model” in which an officer is assigned to drive a car to patrol a neighborhood both before and after the school day.

Some officers also patrol in the evenings when there is a risk of trespassing or vandalism, and they are often present at evening events such as football games, Ortiz Franklin says.

If an incident occurs on campus, the school principal or a person designated by him can call the police and the district authority has a response time of three to seven minutes.

The district did not provide information on how many calls the district police have received in recent years.

“We have public education funds that we can spend preparing kids for college, careers and life. And if we choose to spend education funds on law enforcement, that seems to me like a disservice and a missed opportunity,” Ortiz Franklin said, stressing that the district expects “drastic budget cuts” in the coming years.

As the number of incidents has increased since 2017/18, some parents are calling for more police in schools to ensure the safety of their children.

“Because there is no security, this will continue: drug dealing, fighting, bullying and sexual harassment,” says Maria Hernandez, mother of four LAUSD students and member of Our Voice/Nuestra Voz.

“Many mothers are sad about the death of their children and I don’t think they want anything more,” she added in Spanish.

Evelyn Aleman, director of Our Voice/Nuestra Voz, added: “We as adults really need to step in and take responsibility for the safety of the students.”

She also asked who school principals would call in an emergency if there were no district police at the schools.

“They’re going to call the LAPD. Do we want the principals to do that?”

“An instinctive reaction”

Lindsey Weatherspoon, a 12th-grader at Venice High School, saw a man in a blue uniform enter her classroom a few weeks ago. When she heard about allegations that district police had specifically targeted students of color, she panicked.

“I felt my heart literally pounding in my throat – thinking it was wrong and they were doing random searches or something,” Weatherspoon said.

Fearing police violence, she asked herself: “Will this happen to me? Will this happen to one of my friends?”

The uniformed person who entered the school was a maintenance worker, but Weatherspoon found it “incredible” that there was “such an instinctive reaction.”

Weatherspoon is part of the ACLU of Southern California’s Youth Liberty Squad, one of numerous community organizations that have called for a complete end to policing in schools – whether by county or city police departments.

Several students from these organizations also attend district board meetings and speak out against policing in public comment sessions, claiming that district police disproportionately profile and surveil students of color and continually compromise their emotional safety at school.

Despite making up about 8% of LAUSD’s student body, Black students account for about a quarter of arrests, citations and diversions, according to a 2022 report by the Police Free LAUSD Coalition, a group of community organizations that campaign against school policing.

“Instead of arresting students and kicking them out of our schools, we really need to get to the root cause of what’s going on with our youth. What’s going on at home? And what’s going on psychologically?” says Steven Ortega, youth director for the East Los Angeles-based nonprofit InnerCity Struggle.

“We’re not saying, ‘Let’s let young people get away with anything.’ We’re saying there still needs to be accountability, but on a more holistic level.”